The Bonkurasu Brigade

I’m going to be lazy, and since the majority of the news is covered by NK-DS, I’ll just rip off their info from there (I’ve asked them already, if you’re wondering), as well as from the AFA09 site.

I luls at miku’s and AFA-kun’s pose. It’s similar XDXD

First up, additional guests!

K-ON LIVE DUBBING AND Q&A panel
The K-ON Experience @ AFA09!
The voice actresses of K-ON! will make an appearance for the first time overseas at AFA09. The cast will be doing a live dubbing a scene from the animation, in addition to a Question and Answer session on the main stage.

I LOVE ANISONG – HATSUNE MIKU LIVE ON DAY 1!
HATSUNE MIKU X AFA09!
AFA09 I Love Anisong Concert, featuring special guest, The World Most Popular Virtual Idol, Hatsune Miku to perform LIVE in Singapore for its very first overseas appearance.

Next up, ticket pricing!

Normal entrance tickets, for adults and student tickets

Children below the age of 12 enter for free!

Also, cosplayers will get to enter for free as well! But they probably need to pre-register. Also, I believe the ‘adequate’ costumes for free entry pass equate to ‘no super casual wear’ like grabbing clothes from your wardrobe and saying ‘passerby #348234 from so-and-so anime’ or something along that line. Or maybe another cardboard box Gundam. Some people will do whatever it takes to get free stuff, especially Singaporeans 8D (I know I would.)

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I LOVE ANISONG concert tickets

Day 1:
Nakagawa Shoko
Hatsune Miku
Mizuki Ichirou

Day 2:
Fukuyama Yoshiki
May’n

WOOOOO 5 artistes for only $188???!?

Anyway, to make it easier to justify the costs as compared to last year, let me do some math for all you lazy otakus =P

$188 = 2 days concert tix + 2 days entry tix ($25)
= $163
$163 divided by 4?
You get about SGD$41 per artiste!

Finally, AFA09 Regional Cosplay Championship call-for-entry extension!

One such entry O_O I believe she cosplayed this during STAC’s EOY 2007 with a few from her group as well. XD (Yes, it’s a she.)

At this point of time, quite a few hardcore quality cosplayers all over South-East Asia has applied to be amongst the top. =D not to mention I checked out on the list, and one of them actually cosplayed for over 10 years O_O!
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Looks like a fellow otaku whom I know shared some concerns with AFA09.

Here’s a few things that I noticed.
From the organisation point of view, I personally don’t feel that it is the most pleasing choice. Firstly, this country is not Japan. There are still stocks for K701s, the Fenders are still reasonably prices (yet the prices for AFA’s tickets have increased?). Next, most cosplayers here cosplays characters from Shonen manga, such as Naruto and Bleach, yet there are no Nanoha & Fate cosplayers…xD OK, there’s definitely no right and wrong about what characters the cosplayers would like to cosplay, but from here it’s obvious that what part of the ACG lovers in Singapore knows about ACG….
- Perhaps it’s just a difference in opinion? The additional content, from how I see it, doesn’t come from nowhere. Increase in cost will surely mean increase in prices.

Another thing: cosplayers cosplay a variety of anime, and from recent trends, Naruto and Bleach are only one of the many series’ that have been cosplayed locally. How about the many cosplayers who did K-On, Macross Frontier, etc that mirrors the trends in Japan’s cosplayers as well? Furthermore, the bulk of nanoha and fate fans are guys; and thus obviously, they couldn’t cosplay as their favourite characters.

Yet, I know of several friends who dislikes Miku, to the extreme of leaving Animelo on Day 1 because of her performance.
- I’m not one to say, because I find the Miku craze a bit too much too. Yet honestly speaking, I did enjoy the Animelo performance of Miku. If they leave because of Miku, it would be a waste of the ticket, wouldn’t it? Because personally, the rest of the performers after Miku were good (I’m not too keen on Mamoru Miyano and ALI Project, though. But Minorin, May’n and JAM Project sure are)

Following that is with regards to the K-On Seiyuus. With the majority of them being novice seiyuus, even strictly from Singapore’s market response, their significance proofs to be rather tricky to judge.
I believe that Japanese anime viewers have already taken notice that Japan has set its sights on the problem of widespread fansubbng. Wouldn’t this be bringing this problem back into the limelight? Even more so, this time round, the K-On attractions do not require tickets to enter, which I believe will cause big problems.
- Perhaps the Japanese took it the same way as music piracy; expanding to the foreign market rather than succumbing to piracy, they earn their revenue through other means, like figurines. Every artiste and their management who traveled overseas would surely know of that issue by now. They probably don’t really care much about it already; why else would they even want to travel abroad to overseas conventions? XD

Finally, I have to say that this year’s AFA has given me the DAICON vibes. I feel that the entire Event is geared towards a different point of interest and its priorities are no longer focused on the sponsors and booth owners anymore.
- Even though I agree with you about Daicon, but for AFA itself, we won’t know until we experienced AFA09 this year, right?

With such high ticketing cost, I personally feel that it is definitely unfair towards the booth owners inside, especially under the current financial situation
- It’s only SGD$41 per artiste. Sure, nothing about autographs has been communicated, but even with $41, it’s dirt cheap, to put it simply. At most, I just save more. It’s not everyday that Japanese anime artistes come to South-East Asia everyday.

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Another post about the Asia Animation Conference 2009, or AAC2009 for short, will be up shortly!